Benjamin Woods

Top Gun Maverick - ‘don’t think, just do’ is the perfect political slogan for this cinematographic equivalent of a cardboard children’s book. One must acknowledge the streamlined efficiency of the plot. But the characters were so hollow they might as well have been performed by a Beta version of a Microsoft chat bot. Not a glimmer of humanity in the entire 131 minutes. One imagines Kosinski showing Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly that paper clip ‘help’ animation from Windows 2000 just before shooting the sex scene and saying ‘just like that!’ Seriously, this film would have had a stronger pulse if Maverick had karked it in the opening scene and drones had replaced all of the primary characters.